Dmitry Shlapentokh: Russia chills toward Iran

Friday

The Russian global perspective could well perplex casual observers. It looks as if Russia’s relationship with the West, especially America, has worsened because of the Edward Snowden affair...

SOUTH BEND, Ind.

The Russian global perspective could well perplex casual observers. It looks as if Russia’s relationship with the West, especially America, has worsened because of the Edward Snowden affair and the growing confrontation with Washington in the Middle East. So it is logical to assume that Russia would look eastward in search of allies and proxies.

Indeed, support of Damascus could be interpreted as Moscow’s “turn to the East,” to the Eurasianist model that places Russia more in concert with Asian nations than with the West. Tehran, which shares with Moscow the desire to protect the al-Assad regime, seems to emerge as a logical ally.

But there has been no such move toward Iran. Moreover, at the very time Moscow threatened to send advanced S-300 missiles to Syria to complicate Western or Israeli strikes, its relationship with Iran loosened.

Moscow continues to deny Iran’s request for S-300 missiles, despite a contract signed several years ago. Recently, Tehran threatened to take Moscow to international court for not fulfilling the contract.

Moscow’s withholding the missiles is telling if we recall that the decision was made by Moscow of its own will. Furthermore, Moscow has threatened to abandon support of the Iranian nuclear program if Teheran presses forward with a lawsuit.

With the S-300 problem unresolved, the problem with the Bushehr nuclear plant resurfaced. Russia has been engaged in building the plant for a generation, and has clearly delayed it on various pretexts, making Teheran furious. Bushehr was finally put in operation, but it has been run mostly by a Russian crew, and recently was practically shut down for unknown reasons. Tehran is not pleasedand is not responding positively to Moscow’s proposal to build a new light water reactor and nuclear station.

Moscow finally announced it would hand Bushehr’s operation over to Teheran. But it was still not known whether Iranian or Russian crews would mostly operate it. In addition, Teheran proclaims it is ready to sign a contract to build the new plant, but Moscow does not confirm it.

Moscow’s ties with Tehran’s enemies and friends are also not always pleasing to Tehran.

As Moscow’s relationship with Tehran worsened, the S-300s were not delivered to Syria; at least there was no official confirmation by Western sources. Moreover, Moscow did not respond forcefully to Israel’s threat to attack immediately on their delivery. At the same time, Moscow’s relationship with Armenia, Iran’s foremost ally in the Caucasus, worsened with Russia’s delivery of weapons to Azerbaijan — Armenia and Iran’s sworn enemy — and Putin’s visit to Baku.

Finally we must not discard the personal aspect of Tehran-Moscow relations. Putin rejected the new Iranian president’s invitation to visit Tehran and did not attend his inauguration, which could only be seen by the Iranian side as an affront.

All this indicates that Muslim Asian powers, including Iran, are not seen as Russia’s true allies, or at least that Russia is not ready to embrace any of them mindlessly just because of current tensions with the United States. It is true that Russians, both the elite and the masses, would stand against anything they regarded as Western pressure, but they would do this for a raison d’état, as is the case with its Western counterpart’s operational model, regardless of the variety of ideological and quasi-moral fig leaves.

Moscow’s guarded view of Tehran and its rather cautious political pragmatism should, of course, be taken into account in Western capitals, especially now that the limits of NATO power are clearly seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and the beginning of a sharp decline in military spending has become obvious.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, who was born in the USSR, is an associate professor in history at Indiana University-South Bend.

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